And as the summer asserts itself, albeit damply, I am reminded yet again that there is an optimum temperature range for typing. If – as I have been lately – I am trapped in bad-tempered, green-aired and broiling old London the chances of my being able to batter out more than a paragraph without lapsing into a shallow coma are almost nil. Suddenly, the ghastly similarities between typing and what I imagine to be the irritatingly intermittent joys of auto-erotic asphyxiation come galloping to the fore. Oh, this is all right. Think I'm getting somewhere. Yes, quite nice, probably – especially if we fiddle about round that corner bit for a while and then ... Hello, now why am I on the carpet? Even when I'm conscious, I spend an unhealthy amount of time battling urges towards languid strolling and trying to find a snake I can look at while I'm in pyjamas.

(That was a literary reference, Best Beloveds, not a euphemism.)

This means that I am working mostly at night – which does not sit well with the numberless work-related things I am supposed to do among people who operate – perversely, in my opinion – during the hours of daylight.

Naturally, my earliest years as a typist – in Dundee – were characterised by the opposite problem – an inability to keep even slightly warm. As Dundee is cold, basic rented accommodation is colder, sitting/crouching/lying still and thinking and occasionally writing illegibly (because you are embarrassed to even look at what you're producing) is particularly cold, and all forms of heating beyond huddling under blankets were unaffordable, I spent a great deal of time looking as if I had been prised loose from an outside toilet on the Trans-Siberian Express. I write lying down partly because my spinal column was designed by a drunken monkey, but mostly because I have spent so many long, sniffling, miserable hours lurking in my own bed or those of cheap B&B's, or bleak borrowed houses, trying to stay alive long enough to reach the end of the next paragraph. Not that there is any shame in wearing hats, coats and/or scarves indoors – this can be bracing and dapper. During the winter months I may even leave my living room briskly, putting on my jacket and chapka as I go, whistling merrily and feeling that the journey along the corridor to my study is all I ever really want to know about walking to work.

I only mention this in case any of you have been experiencing unusual difficulties in putting one word after another and have, perhaps, not considered that you may simply be paying inadequate attention to your operational parameters. Perhaps a cold shower would be advisable. Or else a hot one. You decide.

Meanwhile, some of you may have noticed that I have been spending rather more time than usual on – as it were – the radio. This is always a pleasure – radio people take care of words, are generally very courteous and they offer room for more reflection and flexibility than you might find in other media. In fact, the only drawback is one I bring with me: the immense need to swear.

I do not swear much – unless provoked – and wouldn't normally swear at an audience at all, unless I was giving a reading and there were Bad Words on the page in front of me. (And goodness knows why it's less offensive to have someone say fuck at you when they've carefully written it down first, pondered it lovingly, considered other alternatives and then settled on fuck very firmly all over again. Surely that should actually be more disturbing that just hearing them exclaim fuck spontaneously when they – for example – stub their toe on the lectern? But I digress …) Should I, however, be doing something live for a radio programme – or, as also occasionally happens, for the telly – there will always be the moment when someone charming with a clipboard appears to gently murmur, "Of course … not that we think you would, but … you would want to avoid swearing …" Which naturally fills me with an unbearable desire to do nothing but yell obscenities and blasphemies for the duration. This would be why – for example – I spent a portion of one evening last week hopping up and down a corridor in Broadcasting House, quietly reciting every allegedly appalling word I could think of – just to get them out of my system. It's the only way.

Apart from anything else, the murmured requests for verbal restraint are more than averagely heartfelt at the moment if you're involved with a BBC broadcast. Even the slightest additional misstep from the corporation – perhaps caused by an obscure Scottish novelist getting all Anglo Saxon and causing a retired and much-loved ophthalmologist in East Cheam to choke on his suppertime rarebit in the absence of anyone qualified in the Heimlich manoeuvre and provoking "Overpaid, elitist BBC bastards kill popular friend and uncle" headlines – could mean the entire licence fee is redirected to fund bankers' bonuses and the hunting of immigrants through woodland for sport. And, although it has many failings – we all do – I like the idea of the BBC and we could still rebuild it and make it better and happier with itself and therefore kinder to its viewers and listeners – all could go well and is not past saving. I'd hate its demise to be in any way my fault.

I have – as a person interested in words – been informed of the BBC's graded list of Words That Will Get Us All Fired. You'll be relieved to know that orgasm isn't listed and perhaps surprised to learn that what I will voluntarily choose to call the C-word is only in second place. The very worst thing to say is currently a term implying that a person and his mother are involved in relations frowned upon by conventional society and forcing any subsequent offspring to search card shops for the Happy Father's Day To My Loving Brother options. Obviously, the Beeb interviews a lot more 1970s pimps than I had hitherto realised.

Not for the first time, this has led me to reflect on my own ambivalence towards swearing. On the one hand, many of the words involved are melodiously and perfectly formed for the purpose and, frankly, there are few things more dandy – and indeed stimulating – than hearing someone who is genuinely good at swearing, someone who works with imagination, eloquence and poise. On the other hand, the words English uses as terms of abuse are almost universally terms for lovely – or at least interesting – activities and areas of the body which it is either wonderful to have, or delightful to be offered for one's temporary recreation and/or mutual fun. So I have decided, as an exercise, to try and adopt words which would be more logical for me to use when stressed or outraged – and not just flirting in a shouty manner: which would lead me back to the usual repertoire. I have, during readings where the young and tender were present, already used Blair, Blairing and so forth, but I truly don't want that in my mouth regularly, so I don't think it'll do. Death is short, to the point and something I don't enjoy in others and will probably find oppressive for myself … Poverty is definitely offensive and has a good feel to it as a word … as some of you may remember, I have a soft spot for 'sblood, but that would sound massively eccentric and I need no further help in that direction … and, given the burden laid across my every waking minute, there is always novel to consider …

Perhaps you, Dear Readers, can assist. (Without swamping the poor old site with offensiveness which will simply be disappeared.) Or you could try to construct your own lists at home for improved entertainment and expression. Onwards.